Skip to content
Kurdish Centre for Human Rights

Kurdish Centre for Human Rights

Centre Kurde des Droits de l’Homme

  • Home
  • About us
    • Status
    • Activities
  • Reports
    • Iran
    • Iraq
    • Syria
    • Turkey
  • OHCHR
    • KCHR
  • News
    • Press Releases
    • Women
    • Children
    • Prisons
    • War Crimes
  • Contact
  • IT
    • .
      • Actualités
      • Femmes
  • Toggle search form

Mother Tongue, a poem for prisoners

Posted on November 10, 2012July 10, 2019 By admin 698 Comments on Mother Tongue, a poem for prisoners

Anne Waldman is one of the poets of what was called “Beat Generation”. Friend, in particular, of Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Waldman was the youngest of the group. Born in Millville, New Jersey, she moves in MacDougal Street in New York’s Greenwich Village, when she was very small.

It was the sixties, the circle of young poets was wide and very creative, but she immediately tried to get into the circle of the “older” poets as Allen Ginsberg, the father of the Beat Generation, who once called her, his “spiritual wife”.

Anne Waldman wrote a poem for the Kurdish political prisoners on hunger strike since 12 September. We publish the poem here.

Mother Tongue

for the Kurdish political prisoners who are on a hunger strike, November 2012

When they rip out your Mother Tongue

They rip our the heart

For the tongue speaks from the heart against oppression

Against coercion

Against propaganda

Against death

Against sorrow

When they rip out the Mother Tongue

You’re like a child lost in the darkness

May the child always speak and understand its primordial sound

Its power, its infection, its wit, its wisdom, its luminous history

And grow in this

May the child not be in perpetual exile

May the weak be defended in the language of their own psyche

May all rights be respected, and the leaders who struggle

Never cease speaking in the language that moves mountains

That moves the spirit

That attests to the love and beauty of a people, strong in their heritage

This inalienable right, what they are born with, a cosmology, a poetry

Birthed in mother’s milk….

Anne Waldman

News, Prisons, Turkey

Post navigation

Previous Post: CHP: 1677 people died in prison in the last ten years
Next Post: IHD: report on violations of rights in prisons in eastern and southeastern Turkey

More Related Articles

Spanish government “concerned” for use of death penalty in Iraq Iraq
UN “concerned” by the new social media bill in Turkey OHCHR
HRFT Human Rights Report- 18 Sept. Reports
Tortured by the police are remanded in custody Turkey
Iran release 85,000 including political prisoners Iran
RSF: We entered a decisive decade in journalism News

About us

The Kurdish Center for Human Rights was established in Geneva in 2000, according to the Suisse civil law. In response to the genocide, war crimes and human rights violations occurring across the Kurdish regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria.

The KCHR, as a non-profit organization of social utility, was born from the need to  inform the European and Swiss people and the OHCHR on human rights violations against the Kurds via seminars and other dialogue platforms and to attend their meetings; to establish a dialogue with NGO’s, civil movements, associations, government and civil institutions.. Read More….

Contact

Centre Kurde des Droits de l’Homme
Kurdish Center for Human Rights

15, Rue des Savoises, 1205 Genève – Suisse
Tel :+41 (0)22 328 1984
Email: info@kurd-chr.ch / kurd.chr.geneve@gmail.com
Web : http://www.kurd-chr.ch

Compte : Post Finance – CENTRE KURDE
IBAN: CH40 0900 0000 17763911 5

Recent Posts

  • Earthquakes and Human Rights Violations in Turkey
  • KurdDAO Launches Fundraising Campaign in Support of Kurdish Human Rights
  • REPORT OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN TURKISH PRISONS
  • Repression Practices Against the Press and Journalists in Turkey
  • Iran must halt imminent execution of Kurdish prisoner – UN experts 

Search

March 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  
« Jan    

Information

  • Earthquakes and Human Rights Violations in Turkey
  • KurdDAO Launches Fundraising Campaign in Support of Kurdish Human Rights
  • REPORT OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN TURKISH PRISONS
  • Repression Practices Against the Press and Journalists in Turkey
  • Press briefing notes on Turkey

Archives

Copyright © 2023 Kurdish Centre for Human Rights.

Powered by PressBook Green WordPress theme